From the Rocky Mountains to east of the Mississippi River, grasslands once dominated the North American landscape. Today, just a third of the original native prairies still exist.
America’s prairies are defined by wide, open landscapes where grasses reign. They are beautiful ecosystems; they’re also incredibly important. And yet grasslands around the world are often overlooked when it comes to environmental protections. Whereas 18% of forests and around 16% of wetlands enjoy protected status, less than 5% of temperate grasslands worldwide enjoy protections.
Are grasslands being plowed over?
The North American continent’s landscape began to change at the turn of the 19th century as settlers transformed prairies into cropland for agriculture and livestock grazing.
It’s easy to think of this as a problem of yesteryear, but today, the Great Plains continues to lose grasslands at a rate of 1 to 2 million acres per year, due in part to crop clearing and overgrazing:
- Crop clearing continues to pose a significant threat to America’s Heartland. Because grasslands are flat by nature, their topography makes them ideal for agriculture. In the Great Plains region, estimates suggest that 42.7 million acres have high-quality soils and are at the highest risk of conversion to cropland.
Overgrazing, too, presents another danger to our nation’s grasslands. Livestock may destroy vegetation without offering ample time for the biome to recover.
3 reasons why grasslands are important
America’s grasslands have immense environmental importance.
Grasslands are among the most species-rich habitats on Earth and provide critical habitats for birds, pollinators and other wildlife. Many bird species including Mountain Plover, Chestnut-collared Longspur and Baird’s Sparrow prefer to breed in prairies with short grasses and thus depend on them for breeding habitat. America’s prairies also provide havens for large numbers of insect species such as grasshoppers, beetles and solitary bees; they are home to herds of iconic grazing species like bison, elk, deer and pronghorn, too. Life continues underground where prairie dogs, voles and other small mammals thrive.
The deep root systems that define a grassland offer countless environmental benefits. Deep roots absorb excess rain during heavy rainfalls and may prevent flooding. And because native grasses anchor and strengthen the soil, grasslands play an integral role in reducing soil erosion. Nearly half of the world’s topsoil has been lost over the last 150 years which is partly due to converting grassland to cropland.
Grasslands have a part to play in combatting global warming, too. Thanks again to their deep roots, these ecosystems pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it underground. Some studies suggest that grasslands around the world may contain as much as 30% of the carbon stored in the Earth’s soil; converting grasslands into farmable land, then, may release that carbon back into the atmosphere.
What’s being done to preserve grasslands?
The American Prairie Conservation Act is a bipartisan effort to protect America’s remaining grasslands. Introduced by John Thune (S.D.), a Republican and majority leader in the U.S. Senate, and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), a Democrat, this proposed legislation would disincentivize the conversion of native sod to cropland by closing a crop insurance yield substitution loophole in all 50 states.
Here’s how it works. Prairie land converted to cropland wouldn’t be eligible for government subsidized crop insurance, which is kind of a big deal. According to the federal government, subsidies cover 62% of crop insurance premiums ($12 billion in total).
The American Prairie Conservation Act is common sense legislation. It doesn’t stop landowners from using their land; in fact, farmers can continue to ranch and graze on their grasslands. It does, however, remove the financial incentive to plow up fragile grasslands for the first time.
Some might argue that the best policy is to ban any conversion of prairie to crops; after all, we only have one planet. Others might argue that grasslands are worth saving, but they recoil at any hint of government heavy-handedness. This bill strikes a balance by using a light touch, a financial nudge, to convince landowners to preserve their grasslands. Let’s get behind it.
Tell your U.S. House representative to support the American Prairie Conservation Act now.
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